[36] Anab. VI. 11.
[37] The general effect of the monsoon Nearkhos certainly knew; he was a native of Crete, and a resident at Amphipolis, both which lie within the track of the annual or Etesian winds, which commencing from the Hellespont and probably from the Euxine sweep the Egêan sea, and stretching quite across the Mediterranean to the coast of Africa, entered through Egypt to Nubia or Ethiopia. Arrian has accordingly mentioned the monsoon by the name of the Etesian winds; his expression is remarkable, and attended with a precision that does his accuracy credit. These Etesian winds, says he, do not blow from the north in the summer months as with us in the Mediterranean, but from the South. On the commencement of winter, or at latest on the setting of the Pleiades, the sea is said to be navigable till the winter solstice (Anab. VI. 21-1) Vincent I. 43 sq.
[38] The date here fixed by Arrian is the 2nd of October 326 B.C., but the computation now generally accepted refers the event to the year after to suit the chronology of Alexander’s subsequent history (see Clinton’s F. Hell. II. pp. 174 and 563, 3rd ed.). There was an Archon called Kephisidoros in office in the year B.C. 323-322; so Arrian has here either made a mistake, or perhaps an Archon of the year 326-325 may have died during his tenure of office, and a substitute called Kephisidôros been elected to fill the vacancy. The lacuna marked by the asterisks has been supplied by inserting the name of the Makedonian month Dius. The Ephesians adopted the names of the months used by the Makedonians, and so began their year with the month Dius, the first day of which corresponds to the 24th of September. The 20th day of Boedromion of the year B.C. 325 corresponded to the 21st of September.
[39] Regarding the sunken reef encountered by the fleet after leaving Koreatis, Sir Alexander Burnes says: “Near the mouth of the river we passed a rock stretching across the stream, which is particularly mentioned by Nearchus, who calls it a dangerous rock, and is the more remarkable since there is not even a stone below Tatta in any other part of the Indus.” The rock, he adds, is at a distance of six miles up the Pitti. “It is vain,” says Captain Wood in the narrative of his Journey to the Source of the Oxus, “in the delta of such a river (as the Indus), to identify existing localities with descriptions handed down to us by the historians of Alexander the Great ... (but) Burnes has, I think, shown that the mouth by which the Grecian fleet left the Indus was the modern Piti. The ‘dangerous rock’ of Nearchus completely identifies the spot, and as it is still in existence, without any other within a circle of many miles, we can wish for no stronger evidence.” With regard to the canal dug through this rock, Burnes remarks: “The Greek admiral only availed himself of the experience of the people, for it is yet customary among the natives of Sind to dig shallow canals, and leave the tides or river to deepen them; and a distance of five stadia, or half a mile, would call for not great labour. It is not to be supposed that sandbanks will continue unaltered for centuries, but I may observe that there was a large bank contiguous to the island, between it and which a passage like that of Nearchus might have been dug with the greatest advantage.” The same author thus describes the mouth of the Piti:—“Beginning from the westward we have the Pitti mouth, an embouchure of the Buggaur, that falls into what may be called the Bay of Karachi. It has no bar, but a large sandbank, together with an island outside prevent a direct passage into it from the sea, and narrow the channel to about half a mile at its mouth.”
[40] All inquirers have agreed in identifying the Kolaka of Ptolemy, and the sandy island of Krokola where Nearchus tarried with his fleet, for one day, with a small island in the bay of Karâchi. Krôkala is further described as lying off the mainland of the Arabii. It was 150 stadia, or 17¼ miles, from the western mouth of the Indus,—which agrees exactly with the relative positions of Karâchi and the mouth of the Ghâra river, if, as we may fairly assume, the present coast-line has advanced five or six miles during the twenty-one centuries that have elapsed since the death of Alexander. The identification is continued by the fact that the district in which Karâchi is situated is called Karkalla to this day. Cunningham Geog. of An. India, I. p. 306.
[41] The name of the Arabii is variously written,—Arabitæ, Arbii, Arabies, Arbies, Aribes, Arbiti. The name of their river has also several forms,—Arabis, Arabius, Artabis, Artabius. It is now called the Purâli, the river which flows through the present district of Las into the bay of Soumiyâni. The name of the Oreitai in Curtius is Horitæ. Cunningham identifies them with the people on the Aghor river, whom he says the Greeks would have named Agoritæ or Aoritæ, by the suppression of the guttural, of which a trace still remains in the initial aspirate of ‘Horitæ.’ Some would connect the name with Haur, a town which lay on the route to Firabaz, in Mekran.
[42] This name Sangada, D’Anville thought, survived in that of a race of noted pirates who infested the shores of the gulf of Kachh, called the Sangadians or Sangarians.
[43] “The pearl oyster abounds in 11 or 12 fathoms of water all along the coast of Scinde. There was a fishery in the harbour of Kurrachee which had been of some importance in the days of the native rulers.”—Wanderings of a Naturalist in India, p. 36.
[44] This island is not known, but it probably lay near the rocky headland of Irus, now called Manora, which protects the port of Karâchi from the sea and bad weather.
[45] “The name of Morontobara,” says Cunningham, “I would identify with Muâri, which is now applied to the headland of Râs Muâri or Cape Monze, the last point of the Pab range of mountains. Bâra, or Bâri, means roadstead or haven; and Moranta is evidently connected with the Persian Mard a man, of which the feminine is still preserved in Kâśmîrî as Mahrin a woman. From the distances given by Arrian, I am inclined to fix it at the mouth of the Bahar rivulet, a small stream which falls into the sea about midway between Cape Monze and Sonmiyâni.” Women’s Haven is mentioned by Ptolemy and Ammianus Marcellinus. There is in the neighbourhood a mountain now called Mor, which may be a remnant of the name Morontobari. The channel through which the fleet passed after leaving this place no longer exists, and the island has of course disappeared.